Friday, May 8, 2015

That Time Again...

The Chicago White Sox were utterly in character in losing the third game of the recent series with the Detroit Tigers. After winning the first two games, the Sox torpedoed expectations and regressed to meek batting supporting good pitching; next week the poles will reverse, I suspect. Likely that will be the course throughout the season: one game up, two games back. The off-season signings of Melky Cabrera, Adam LaRoche,
Jeff Samardzija, and David Robertson excited all of us Sox fans—I told a friend in March that this was the first Spring Training I was feeling realistically—not fanly—optimistic about the team's chances. The White Six are currently a game out of last place.

My "It's early!" and "It's cold!" and "Wait until [ ]" proclamations have worn out their expired-by dates. Now is the time of the season when—and I admit this to few people—I wish I could be a fair-weather fan, adopt myself to whatever team is winning, be it the Giants or the Cardinals or the Royals, and enjoy a quality season with quality players and managers playing quality major league baseball, enduring player- and team-slumps that genuinely feel like the bottom of a hill to be conquered, not an endless void into dark mediocrity. But I can't do that. I'm a fan. And so I'll continue to wax philosophically to Amy over morning coffee, and lunch, and happy hour that losing builds character, that baseball is about adversity, that it's a humbling game. "A lifetime .300 hitter fails to get even a nubber hit seven out of ten times!" Meanwhile, over in Detroit....

Author of No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing (forthcoming), Field Recordings from the Inside (essays), This Must Be Where My Obsession With Infinity Began (essays), Conversations With Greil Marcus, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell (33 1/3 Series), Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Installations (National Poetry Series), and Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band. ✸✸ Music Columnist for The Normal School. ✸✸ Five-time "Notable Essay" selection at Best American Essays. ✸✸ Associate Professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

MY BOOKS

“The collection’s 18 essays do what the best music writing is supposed to do—they make the reader care, regardless of whether they enjoy, or are familiar with, the material being written about; I was mostly willing to follow Bonomo anywhere he wanted to go.” Los Angeles Review of Books

"Joe Bonomo seems to have a Cornell box for each difficult, lyrical moment he remembers. He is a theorist of the self's construction out of the past, full of resistance and the heartbreaking urge to yield." David Lazar

"Marcus's knowledge of music and his widespread interests in related topics make this a delight and a real page-turner." The Big Takeover

"One of the five most important books about AC/DC." Jesse Fink, author of Bon: The Last Highway

"I've read most of the books about him and will now put Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found on the indispensable list. It's one of the best books about the man and his music." Lincoln Journal Star

"Joe Bonomo has written a fine book: a book not only about a band or times passed, but also about the rare virtue of endurance." Nick Tosches